Aldea Infantil "San Francisco de Asis"

(Due to time constraints, this entry has been typed in English.)

"Aldea Infantil" translates to "Children's Village" in English. The whole name means, Children's Village St. Francis of Assisi. The principal religion in Peru is Catholicism, so it makes sense that many of the buildings would be named after saints or have a Catholic reference.

Throughout our stay in Huancavelica, the HMM student volunteers and I went to the orphanage, Aldea Infantil, nearly everyday to plan fun activities for the kids, teach them the benefits of sanitation and maintaining personal hygiene, and help them with their homework in English. My project at the orphanage was to give each child a new pair of shoes; I'll talk more about that later on!

Here are pictures of the front lawn right when you enter the orphanage:

That small green building is actually an auditorium, and that's where we held the majority of our activities for the kids. Here is a picture inside "el auditorio":

During our first day at the orphanage, we already did a couple of fun activities with the kids! The first thing we did was have everyone form a circle and introduce themselves:

When it was Little Mike's turn, all of the kids were staring right at him with their eyes wide since "Little" Mike stands more than 6 feet tall (or at least it seems like it!). Peruvians are generally short and slim, so it was funny to see everyone's reaction to Mike:

Our next activity with the kids was to have everyone create their own name tag (student volunteers included) -- it was a fun activity and at least we got to take pictures of each kid holding their own name tag:

After that, we spent the rest of the day getting to know the kids and looking around the orphanage.

Here's a picture of me and Maria, the first kid I made friends with at the orphanage:

An interesting thing to note is that many of these kids don't have digital cameras, haven't seen a digital camera, and thus haven't taken many photos with a digital camera. So as you can probably tell, many of the kids were interested in taking their own pictures with my camera and seeing the images after:

While touring the orphanage, I noticed that Maria stopped to get water from what looked like a fountain. Little did I know that she would actually drink water from a small hole that had water just barely trickling down from it:

Later, she removed a big ball of trash from the bottom of the fountain; this ball of trash ended up being a plug to drain the water in one side of the fountain to the other:

This was a bit shocking to watch -- I've never seen anything like that before! But, also surprising to me was the bathroom:

The faucets and toilets seemed to be in fairly good condition, and I was even more surprised at how clean everything was! In general, the buildings in the orphanage weren't in bad shape at all, and there were a few classrooms, too:

And for some reason, I always thought the orphanage was going to be a lot smaller, but there was just more and more stuff to see. For example, there was a cuy farm! "Cuy" means "guinea pig" in English. The orphanage had its own cuy farm, meaning they breed their own guinea pigs to eat later. Luckily, the team and I got to check out this farm, and we saw as Sirvio caught one with ease:

I thought it'd be easy to catch them, but they're pretty quick! It took me a little more than 2 minutes to catch just one, even though Sirvio caught one in mere seconds. Here's my picture with the cuy I caught:

Isn't it cute?

Angelica, one of the "moms" at the orphanage, was taking care of one of the youngest kids at Aldea. I noticed she carried him on her back using a large cloth. I wanted to try holding the baby on my back, too, since I always see the older women in Peru carrying their children in this way:

Isn't that amazing? I think I may have been holding on a bit too tightly, though, because the baby started to cry. After giving the baby back to Angelica, the team and I continued touring the place. All around, there are great views of the surrounding mountains:

It's unreal. How often do you see mountain tops just looming around, everywhere you walk? Also, there was still more to see:

They've got their own greenhouse! I'm not exactly sure if they use it to grow their own vegetables to eat, but if they breed their own cuy then I'm pretty sure they grow their own veggies. Afterwards, we decided to just have some fun:

(One of my favorite photos of the hombres!)

(Seesaw with T.C.!)

(We love the slide.)

And here are even more pictures of the orphanage:

(So many stray dogs just wandering around in Huancavelica!)

The children were so fun to be around -- it was such a joy volunteering at the orphanage and getting to meet the kids. There's a total of about 38 kids ranging from ages 1 to 17 years old, with some who go to school in the morning, and others who go to school in the afternoon. Our team would visit the orphanage in the afternoon, so we wouldn't always get to see everyone all at once, but it was still just as fun! In general, the kids had a huge desire to learn English, and to just play and be around new faces. They were always interested in what activities we had for them, and they were well-behaved, too! It definitely was tough having to say "ciao."

I'm going to post more about our adventures and activities at Aldea in later entries!